


north by northwest

by quillquiver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Hiking, Kissing, Lots of kissing, M/M, Past Near Death Experience, adventure racing, eco-challenge, mentions of past cardiac arrest, mentions of past hypothermia, world's toughest race
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26536519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillquiver/pseuds/quillquiver
Summary: Dean stares down the entrance posts of Camp 4, unblinking as the moon crawls higher and higher in the sky. He thinks he’s been in the same spot for hours, but it’s hard to tell with panic squeezing at his windpipe. They should be back by now. Shouldn’t they be back by now? God, running support was a mistake. Everything single fucking part of coming back here was amistake.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	north by northwest

**Author's Note:**

> The AU nobody wanted or needed. Happy destiel day!

Dean stares down the entrance posts of Camp 4, unblinking as the moon crawls higher and higher in the sky. He thinks he’s been in the same spot for hours, but it’s hard to tell with panic squeezing at his windpipe. They should be back by now. Shouldn’t they be back by now? God, running support was a mistake. Everything single fucking part of coming back here was a _mistake_.

“Hey Dean, you okay?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. Runs a dirty hand over his mouth. He tries for a smile that must look more like a grimace, refusing to look at the camera pointed at his face. Eco-Challenge is known for being a sufferfest in a metric fuckton of different ways, but the film crew adds a special layer of hell. “Look, Trace, I know that these little interviews are part of the whole race thing, but I ain’t a racer. Just doing my job. Waiting.”

He hears her re-adjusting—shift the camera on her shoulder, get a little comfier. Dean rolls his eyes. He’s not an idiot; he knows that their team has a helluva story: the rivalry between them and the Russians, his untimely med-evac, the love story that followed… they’re the favourites and they’ve been first to every camp so far, but Dean knows that means fuck all. One nav error and you’ve lost time, one misstep and you twisted your ankle. People are tired; they get hurt, make dumb fuckin’ decisions, and all it takes is one mistake to get heli’d out to the nearest hospital.

“Haven’t heard anything over the radio, so… that’s good, right?”

“Depends. If they were making good time, no nav fuckups, everybody’s healthy… yeah, they should be done the hardest part of this thing.” Dean bites his lip. “But you don’t know, right? They could be lost or hurt o-or hypothermic, or whatever, and we just… don’t know.”

“And that’s what happened to you. Hypothermia.”

Dean nods through the sense-memory of it; getting to the top of the falls ready to swim across the pools on top, the water leeching the cold from him until he was blue and purple and stopped shivering. He’d been so cold for so long he didn’t notice anything but the fact that he wanted to fucking lie on the riverbank and sleep. “Uh, yeah,” Dean mutters turning back to the camp entrance. “Whole team was straddling the line of cold and hypothermic for like half the swim, but I just… I didn’t notice how cold I was. Didn’t realize until we got out, but we couldn’t stop to get a rescue or nothin’—”

“Why not?”

Dean snorts. _Why not?_ “With my symptoms? I stopped, I woulda died. We’d run into some bad luck and lost the emergency blanket, and everything was fucking freezing because of the water. Stripping down and huddling together wasn’t gonna help me; I needed serious medical attention.” His nails bite into his palms. “It’s the coldest I’ve ever been.”

“But you made it to the checkpoint,” Tracy points out. “I mean, you’re here now.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, eyeing the camera warily. She gives him an encouraging look, and he sighs. Fuck reality TV. “Ah… I’m a pretty big dude to carry, though. Um. ’Specially when half the team was in danger of hypothermia, too. Benny and Sam couldn’t drag me; everyone was too weak. Jo weighs like ninety pounds soaking wet—”

“So how’d you get there?”

Dean bites his lip, looking down at the dirt. He picks at his shoelace. “Cas,” he says quietly. “He, uh.” Dean stops. Takes a breath. Starts over. “The Russians, they had this huge rivalry with us, right? For years. And they’d always win, they lived and breathed the stuff. Me and Sammy? Our Dad went off the deep-end and thought the world was gonna end; wayfinding and orienteering was just like… life, for us. Fuck, I remember one time, Dad picked me up from school and then left me in the middle of nowhere with a compass and a knife—” Tracy shifts and Dean cuts himself off, suddenly and keenly aware of the camera. He swallows thickly. “…Anyway, he did what he could with the tools he had.

“But the Russians? Adventure-racing was in their blood; family came from money, they moved to the Swiss Alps to train their team of mountaineer kids. We met ‘em on the course of our first Eco-Challenge and—I dunno, man, have you ever talked to them? Pompous dickbags, I’m tellin’ you.”

“But not Castiel.”

“Who the hell told you that?” Dean says, smiling faintly. They first time they’d met, had been caked in mud and he’d still held himself like his shit didn’t smell. “Cas was goddamn unbearable.”

Tracy grins. “That changed though, didn’t it?”

It did, eventually. When Dean was on Death’s friggin doorstep, sandwiched between two teammates who weren’t far behind. Team Novak managed to overtake them on a gravel road at 6 a.m. and about a mile from the checkpoint. Dean barely remembers seeing them; Sam was the one who filled him in. Told him that Cas made it about 100 feet and then turned around and came running back. That his team didn’t notice he was gone until they reached the warming tent. That they yelled at him in English and Russian and Cas just stood there with a blanket and a hot chocolate and stared at Dean, through the chest pains and the cramps and the cardiac arrest, until the helicopter came. 

“Yeah,” Dean murmurs. “I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t for him.”

Tracy lets that sit for a bit, but because it’s reality TV eventually nudges him with her foot again. “Because…?” She prompts.

Dean rolls his eyes. “He helped us—me especially—to the checkpoint. Stayed until they called med-evac for me… Sammy says his team was fuckin’ furious. They were never able to recover the lead; Canada won.” A beat. “I mean, can you imagine that? Throwing it all away for some dude you’ve never even had a full conversation with? It’s just—crazy.” Dean shakes his head. “Then I wake up after fever has just… fucked me like six ways to Sunday and who does my brother tell me is right outside my hospital door? Castiel Novak.”

He’d been really cute, too, Dean remembers thinking. With a wilting bouquet of shitty flowers and a pressed shirt and looking lost and nervous and freaked. His family had disowned him and he’d just sat in the hospital, waiting.

“That’s—that’s just the type of guy Cas is, y’know? He’s just… the best.”

“So when did you start dating?”

Dean shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter. We did. And we haven’t killed each other yet, so… seems to be going pretty well.”

It’d taken months, Dean remembers. Months of slow, hard friendship: of arguments and blowouts and unbearable wanting, until on one totally regular, run-of-the-mill Tuesday, Cas had kissed him in the middle of Doctor Sexy. Things had been a little less slow-going, after that.

Tracy narrows her eyes at this, but lets it go. “And what about when he told you he wanted to do Eco-Challenge again? Must’ve been a shock.”

Dean doesn’t tell her that it was Sam’s idea. He doesn’t say that he almost had a heart attack, or that he and Cas almost broke up because Cas stood with Sam. He doesn’t say that he begged them not to go where we couldn’t follow—because he couldn’t, not with all the complications that one stupid swim cost his health. Instead, Dean turns back to the road and shrugs. “Took me a while to come around, but I did, eventually. This sport… the highs are astronomical, but the lows can leave you near six feet under. You have to be insane to do it.” He curls his fingers into the leg of his damp pants. “But my team is smart, and seasoned, and they trust each other and I trust them. They’re gonna be fine,” Dean says, repeating the last to himself under his breath.

_They’re gonna be fine._

There’s a beep, and a quick look to the right reveals the camera coming down off of Tracy’s shoulder. It isn’t until the damn thing is off that Dean realizes how tense he was during his little impromptu interview, but now that the pressure is gone, all that’s left is the pure, unadulterated anxiety of not knowing if his little rag-tag family is okay. Carefully, Tracy moves to squeeze his shoulder. Dean takes a big, shaking breath.

_They’re gonna be fine._

***

Dean sees them, four dark smudges in the dim of early morning, before Tracy does. Before she can grasp his knee and say _hey, Dean_. Before she can turn on her camera. But Dean would recognize Sam’s dumb, loping stride anywhere, so he’s off like a fucking rocket, turning on the camp stove, starting coffee in the camp stove. All their gear is laid out ready to go, but Dean checks it once, twice, three times anyway. Makes sure their snacks are out and there’s enough room for them to sit and rest for as long as they need.

He sprints to the camp gates and tries not to fucking cry. Because that, right there? That’s his family breaking out into a run. All of them in one piece. Safe. _Smiling_.

Sam gets to him first, because of course he does; almost bowling Dean over as he gives him a huge hug and big kiss on the cheek. He smells like ass and wet dog, but Dean holds him fiercely, grinning big and wide as he gets tackled from three more sides. “Jesus, okay, I get it!” Dean says, quickly wiping away the tears at the corners of his eyes. “Y’all stink, c’mon.”

They all peel away one by one, patting his shoulder or cheek, asking after food and drink and where Dean’s setup is until only Castiel remains. He looks pretty much as banged up as the others, though Dean can barely tell for how fucking hard the weirdo is smiling. “Hello, Dean,” he says.

“Hey, Cas.”

It feels pretty weird to do this with cameras around, so Dean just reaches out and squeezes Cas’s hand. Kisses him on the cheek. But then Castiel wraps his arms around him that Dean feels the waterworks start up all over again. He squeezes back hard, burying his face into Cas’s dirty neck. Presses a kiss there. “Thank you,” he breathes, brows furrowing as he tries to stop his sudden relief from coming out through his eyeballs. “Fuck, just— _thank you_.”

“Of course,” Cas mumbles.

They hold each for way longer than is probably considered appropriate, but Dean pulls back as if none of that ever happened so. Whatever. “You, uh, you hungry?” he asks, wiping at his damp cheeks. “How long are you staying?”

“Food, and then we’re gone. The lead we have is good, we think, but it’s hard to tell.”

Dean nods. “Cool. Coffee? And water?”

“Is the Pope a Catholic?”

“God, you’re such a weirdo,” Dean grins. “C’mon.”

***

“Dean? They’re coming in.”

It takes a second beyond the sensation of incredible relief for the words to really register; _they’re coming in._ As in, they’re finishing the race. They’re done. They’re finishing the race and they’re done.

They’re first.

They’re _done_.

They’re gonna win.

Dean is herded onto a boat with the race MC. The finish line is already lined with torches, the wooden platform and sign behind it something closer to Survivor than any race Dean’s ever done. It’ll take another twenty minutes for his rag-tag little team to make land, and Dean spends every second of that poised like a prairie dog, his eyes trained on the slowly brightening horizon.

Team NW hops out of their boat at 4:03am.

Jo’s hair is stringy and streaked with mud, Benny’s racing shirt has the sleeves ripped off and Sam’s not wearing anything but those dumb Patagonia shorts of his, scrapes and bruises on display for all to see. They look exhausted. They look ecstatic. They look like they just went three rounds with Mother Nature and lost.

Cas, though? Cas looks in his element. The stubble makes his jaw look sharper, the dirt brings out his eyes. He helps haul the boat onto land and Dean can see the play of his muscles under his shirt. He’s flushed and filthy and _fucking_ gorgeous, and he was made for this; being out here, racing: a wild thing in the wild, finally. Free.

While the rest of the team hauls ass to the finish line platform, Cas doesn’t make it out of the ocean.

Dean knows Cas can carry him; he knows because he’s lost count of how many times he’s been manhandled up against a wall, or onto a counter, or, half-sleep, carried to bed. Cas likes manhandling him, and Dean likes being manhandled—but after six days of little food and less sleep, Castiel goes down in the water like a rock, the weight of Dean’s body throwing them both into the drink as he hurls himself forward.

Cas laughs.

He laughs as he sputters saltwater. He laughs as he holds tight to Dean. He laughs as Dean tries to kiss him. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy. He honestly isn’t sure he’ll ever be this happy again. They’re alive. They’re safe. They _won_ —

“JESUS, DEAN, GET OFF OF HIM—”

“WE STILL NEED TO FINISH—”

“DEAN, WHAT THE FUCK—”

Whatever, same friggin’ difference.

Dean pulls Cas to his feet and they jog up to the platform, beaming, shifting in place, totally wigging out because not only did they finish, not only did they _win_ , but they beat out _Russia_. They stuck it to Cas’s ungrateful, shitty fucking family. They beat the unbeatable team. Them; Dean’s broken little family.

“Team NW, wow it’s been a wild ride for you,” the MC says. “You’re amazing. Watching your journey through this race has been a total treat.” He turns to Cas, and Dean hates reality TV. He _hates_ it, he just wants to be given their medals so they can go shower and celebrate and sleep. He still needs to look each of them over to make sure they don’t have any injuries, he needs to get them fed, he needs to spend an entire night cuddling and worshiping Cas for being the _best goddamn team captain_ in the entire friggin' world—

“Castiel, you told us, at the beginning of this thing, that you invited everyone to come catch you,” the MC says, pausing for dramatic effect. Dean almost groans. Jo looks murderous. The smiles never waver from Benny, Sam and Cas’s faces. “…And though many tried, no one was able to meet that challenge. Congratulations, Team NW, you are the winners of the world’s toughest race.”

The team erupts into cheers but Dean barely hears any of it. He doesn’t feel himself getting sprayed with champagne, though he definitely tastes it on Cas’s mouth when he plants one on him, right in front of the cameras. Jo whoops and tackles them both, and it becomes a dog pile, all of them on the floor and yelling and laughing.

They get herded into another boat soon after, when their exit interviews are done and there’s no more sensationalized bullshit to squeeze out of them. Cas takes the longest, but he climbs onto the boat with a small smile on his face, the thing living up around his eyes as he tiredly clutches at his medal.

Dean can barely keep his eyes open now that they’re finally together, but he does his best to dutifully listen to one of the race stories Sam is currently telling him, eyes sluggishly darting to Jo as she interrupts to make corrections. Cas settles into his side and immediately finds his hand. He laces their fingers together and Dean presses a kiss to his scratched up knuckles.

“And Benny was a total rock, Dean, I’m telling you…”

They have time to re-hash all this stuff again tomorrow. They can go over race stories, talk about what was good, what went wrong… but for now, Dean’s happy to hear the highlights, speeding towards a hot shower and a good meal.

Jo laughs and Sam pushes at her shoulder. Benny snorts at the both of them. Cas, the nerd, as pretty much fallen asleep against his side.

God, he loves these people.


End file.
